Professor Melissa's Cruise Pod
Jul 24, 2026 · 24 min · 11 segments
Big news, and I wanted you to hear it from me first. After years as a travel agent myself, and helping thousands of you start and grow your own travel businesses, I finally built the host agency I…
First, the big fork in the road, because most people don't even know they have a choice here.
And I certainly didn't when I first signed on to become a travel agent years ago.
There are three main ways in if you want to become a travel agent.
You can become a regular employee at a travel agency and draw a salary, which is stable, but those jobs that are legitimate are pretty limited, and it caps your freedom and your upside.
You have a flat salary, that's it, and it's basically a full-time job or part-time, depending on the position.
Another path is you can buy a franchise, just like if you buy a McDonald's franchise, but this is for travel, where you pay to operate under an established brand and you do things under their brand and the way that they dictate that you do it.
And the third path, which is the most common for travel agents and the path that I chose and I recommend, is to sign with a host agency as an independent contractor.
And the cost between the franchise path and the independent contractor path are not even close.
If you go with a travel franchise, that can run you anywhere from five to $25,000 just to get started with an additional franchise fee that can run around 10,000 or even more.
Plus often you're paying an ongoing cut of your sales on top of that.
So that is not the cheap path.
There are definitely some perks to signing with a franchise agency.
Obviously the brand, the name, the structure, the protocols, all of that.
But a host agency by contrast usually runs you a very small monthly fee and it's the same industry, but a completely different barrier to entry, basically almost no barrier to entry, which is exactly why most people do end up starting with a host agency.
First, the big fork in the road, because most people don't even know they have a choice here.
And I certainly didn't when I first signed on to become a travel agent years ago.
There are three main ways in if you want to become a travel agent.
You can become a regular employee at a travel agency and draw a salary, which is stable, but those jobs that are legitimate are pretty limited, and it caps your freedom and your upside.
You have a flat salary, that's it, and it's basically a full-time job or part-time, depending on the position.
Another path is you can buy a franchise, just like if you buy a McDonald's franchise, but this is for travel, where you pay to operate under an established brand and you do things under their brand and the way that they dictate that you do it.
And the third path, which is the most common for travel agents and the path that I chose and I recommend, is to sign with a host agency as an independent contractor.
And the cost between the franchise path and the independent contractor path are not even close.
If you go with a travel franchise, that can run you anywhere from five to $25,000 just to get started with an additional franchise fee that can run around 10,000 or even more.
Plus often you're paying an ongoing cut of your sales on top of that.
So that is not the cheap path.
There are definitely some perks to signing with a franchise agency.
Obviously the brand, the name, the structure, the protocols, all of that.
But a host agency by contrast usually runs you a very small monthly fee and it's the same industry, but a completely different barrier to entry, basically almost no barrier to entry, which is exactly why most people do end up starting with a host agency.
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